“This is your brain.  This is your brain on drugs.”  It’s been a few years, but the images from the public service ad are still burned into our minds.  The man holds the egg, complete in its shell.  Seconds later, the egg is broken and placed in a searing hot skillet and is shown charred and smoking, with hot grease popping everywhere.  “Any questions?”  A vivid image of irreparable damage done by senseless thrill chasers, who don’t think about any consequences, and don’t look past tonight’s party or the next “high”.  I don’t want to talk about drugs (nor the accuracy of the imagery) tonight, but I do want to talk about messed up brains.

When I was about 11 years old, my brothers and I rushed down the block to the neighbors house one weekday afternoon after school.  When we weren’t playing combat, they with their BB guns, we with our homemade slingshots, we occasionally undertook an organized game or two.  They had a huge front yard, ideal for a little “two below” football.  Of course, we didn’t have pads, hence the sissy rules that no tackling was allowed.  The defenders simply had to slap the ball carrier anywhere below the waist with two hands to stop the play.  I’m not saying that no tackling actually occurred, but as far as any adults were concerned, it didn’t.  That day, we had probably ten guys playing the game.  This was a luxury, since we usually could only get together a smaller group.  The bigger teams meant a better game, simply because there might actually be some blocking and the plays would be mixed up a bit more.  We were honored to have one of the running backs from the varsity team of our local high school playing with us, mostly because he lived at this particular house and his younger brothers begged until he grudgingly agreed.  Unfortunately, he was playing for the team I wasn’t on this afternoon.

I didn’t usually get my hands on the football much, since I wasn’t what you would call athletically gifted.  Oh, I was active enough, but my passion ran more to bike riding and tree climbing.  Football was an afterthought, something to do when everyone else wanted to.  Thus, it was a complete shock when my name was called in the huddle for a “reverse” play.  The center would hike it to the guy playing quarterback, who would hand it off to the guy to his left.  I’d come across from the right side and take the ball from him, running around the left end to make the game winning touchdown.  Well, that was the way I envisioned it anyway.  What really happened was that I found myself with the ball in my arms and the varsity running back chasing me before I got across the line of scrimmage.  I was a scrawny eleven-year old with this big weight-lifting six-footer chasing me and I did the only thing I could do;  I ran as fast as I could, turning my head to watch as he came at me.  Unfortunately I never saw him hit me, because I ran into the side of the house before he could reach me.  The brick house.  With my head.

The next thing I knew, it was three hours later and I was lying on the couch at my house with a wet cloth on my forehead.  Moms did that in those days.  Somehow a wet washcloth folded up and placed on the forehead made things right.  Not this time.  I had a horrible headache and asked through the pain, “What happened?”  My parents looked at me a little uneasily.  “You don’t remember?”  When I replied in the negative, they related the events of the past three hours, including the blood flowing everywhere as they were called to get me, the trip to the emergency room, and the six stitches in the side of my head.  Since I didn’t remember any of it, I assumed that I had been knocked out the whole time, but they assured me that I had never been unconscious.  Three hours lost, and I had spent them doing exciting things I would never remember!  With my eyes wide open, I had made the trip to the hospital, answering questions about the incident to the nurse and doctor.  Stitches were inserted into my head.  With a needle.  And I have to this day, absolutely no memory whatsoever of it happening.  They called it a concussion.

I hear of football players who sustain multiple concussions.  We use the word lightly, as if it were a simple bump to the head, signifying little.  “He just got a concussion; nothing serious.”  The brain smashes against the skull inside!  Damage is done, some of it permanent!  It’s not a little thing.  I only had it happen once, but my lost three hours will forever remind me of the seriousness of it.

One of my friends lightly dismissed the Super Bowl yesterday as a boy’s game with it’s pads and helmets, eschewing it for the “manly” game of rugby, played only in shorts, tee shirts, and shoes.  Every time I flip through the cable channels on the TV, I can find an “Ultimate Fight” going on, with some musclebound he-man taking on another beefy wanna-be champion in a brutal match.  These human cock-fights are now sanctioned and pay big bucks to the winners who will almost certainly pay the “ultimate” price either in paralysis, or strokes, Parkinson’s Disease, or even in so-called “boxer’s dementia”, a state in which the former fighter loses his mental facility completely.  These are all the result of the battering of the brain inside the skull.  And, in all of these “sports”, these all-brawn and no-brain thrill seekers risk it without a second thought, for stupid reasons; money, fame, notoriety.

I am now getting carefully down from my soapbox (wearing a helmet by the way, to avoid injury). But, I have experienced first hand the incredible loss of a loved one to the horrible thief we call dementia, through no visible cause that we know.  I am having a hard time justifying participating in actions which increase the risk and in some cases almost guarantee the occurrence of mental impairment.  Just my two cents worth on the subject.  I promise that I’ll do my best to never mention it again.

I am however, still mad about those three hours.  I wonder if a hypnotist could help me get them back into my memory vault.  As far as running into that house goes, I maintain to this day that it moved into my way.  I mean, who’s stupid enough to actually run head first into a brick wall?

“I have short-term memory loss, though I like to think of it as presidential eligibility.”
(Paula Poundstone~American comic)

“Know Thyself.”  The ancient Greek proverb sets warring emotions into action inside of me.  There are days when I pride myself in being aware of who I am, not only in the spiritual realm, but also in the practical, visible world.  These are the times when I’m happy with myself, with my thoughts, deeds, and words.  But underlying that pride is the realization that I really do know myself and the knowledge does not evoke anything approaching the “warm fuzzies”.  At the core, I know the selfish, loud, arrogant me and I don’t always like that person very much.  I don’t think you would either.

Tonight, I had to apologize for words I said earlier today.  I have hinted before at my argumentative spirit, a trait which I successfully control much of the time, but which rears its ugly head periodically, almost as if to remind me that I’m not really as reformed as I want to believe.  In the heat of an argument (one which I started myself), I made some statements which were personally derogatory, not of the man I was arguing with, but of someone else.  I suffered through the afternoon with the weight of those words and finally responded late this evening to my conscience.  Apologies made, fences mended, I’m still not sure all is right.

Words said and repented of may be apologized for, and even forgiven, but they can never be unsaid.  The damage done, however eloquently the mea culpa is communicated, can never be undone.  The words entered into the consciousness through the portal of the hearing ears and I can’t erase them.  Like Pandora with her fabled box, the painful utterances have escaped, never to be recaptured.

I’ll recover; my relationship with the other person will likely remain strong, but I feel the need for something else.  I’m not talking about penance; I understand and experience Grace and need no more.  I think what I’m feeling is a sense of loss.  Once I controlled those words in my head, but no longer.  They escaped through my mouth to other ears, there to wreak their havoc, whether or not it was their intended purpose.

Consider the great seagoing ships…Their size and mass is tremendous, but they are controlled and steered by a tiny (comparatively) rudder.  The captain stands at the helm and makes adjustments to that little rudder, and the ship goes where he wishes.  That’s the way it is with the tongue.  A tiny fraction of the total body’s mass, it too often controls the complete man.  This example doesn’t come from my thoughts, but was written centuries ago by a man named James, who was Jesus’ brother.  The tongue has throughout mankind’s history been the cause of innumerable quagmires, more difficult to escape by far than to instigate.  He reminds us further that the tongue is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.  I concur.

“Know Thyself.”  Tonight, I recognize who I am.  My tongue fully in check, I stand contrite.  I would like to believe that it will always be so.  I know it will not.

However, like salve on an open wound, the rest of James’ advice aids the healing process.  He tells me that the wisdom of heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.  Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.  I know who I am, but I also know who I want to be.

I’m still breathing, so there’s still hope…

“One reason the dog is such a lovable creature is that his tail wags, not his tongue.”

We rented our store space from Max for twelve years.  Max was an absentee landlord, his wife having inherited the aging shopping center years before.  It was obvious from the outset that this was to be a one-way relationship, with me paying the rent and Max taking it.  He made it clear that the party of the first part (that was me) was responsible for any and all costs involved with maintaining a business in his building.  What wasn’t so clear was what the party of the second part (that would be Max) was responsible for.  I think I’ve mentioned the great floods of 1986, all descending from above, not the other way around as floods often do.  The mention of lawyers was sufficient to remedy that little disaster, but there were a few other situations which defied clarification.

For a good number of years, things went swimmingly.  We didn’t have much cause to complain, although business could have been better, but the shopping center was great.  On one side of us was a hardware store.  We never had any problem with them, since there was a concrete block wall between us to act as a barrier to noises and odors.  On the other side of us, for those first few years, a great couple ran first a catalog store, then an appliance store.  Although there was just a sheet rock wall between us and the material didn’t even go all the way to the roof (more about this later), it was never a problem.  These folks were great neighbors who probably had more to complain about with us than we with them.

Being the kind of guy who thinks that periodical change is not a bad thing, I wasn’t unhappy when they told us that they had purchased a building and were moving.  Silly me, I thought that life would always be this good; polite proprietors, quiet activities, no noxious odors.  Well, live and learn, is the only appropriate remark that comes to mind.  The parade of unsuitable businesses would begin very soon.

It started with a used furniture business.  While the owner was nice enough, the products which arrived on a sporadic schedule weren’t.  It seems that the fellow didn’t have much working capital, so the furniture was purchased from some fairly seedy locations.  We soon had an infestation of roaches, under shelving units, in pianos, and any nook and cranny they could find.  Not having an aversion to pesticides, we soon took care of the bountiful crop of creepy crawlies, but new ones arrived on a regular basis.  Fortunately for us, the would-be entrepreneur in the furniture business ran out of money and decided to enter a different line of employment, so the critter-infested “gently-used” items found a new home somewhere far away.  We breathed a sigh of relief, but the day was not far off when we would wish for the not-so-beautiful furniture to grace the premises once more instead of its replacement.

Within a few weeks of the home furnishings’ departure, a flat bed truck backed up to the front walk and we watched as thousands of pounds of dumbbells and barbells, benches and weight machines were moved into the space.  Never having been in a weightlifting gym, I was optimistic.  This had promise!  What could possibly be bad about having a gym next door?  The next day, that question was answered resoundingly.   As the whole building vibrated and reverberated with the sound, we found that when these men were finished with a particular weight apparatus, they didn’t gently replace them on the floor, but they dropped them onto the concrete below them, seemingly from a great height.  And, the thin walls were no match for the guttural groans and grunts emanating from the throats of the fellows when they were straining with the great load, making for some strange breaks in our conversations with potential guitar and piano customers.  Of course, that was immensely preferable to the noises which came from those same throats when the weight proved too much for them, or someone was hurt.  Those noises turned the air blue with unrepeatable phrases and curse words which came through the walls as if they were made of paper.  One day the expletives were especially  objectionable and continued unabated for some time, and I lost my temper.  Well, not so much that I lost my good judgment and tried to face down a ripped and angry body builder, but I walked over to the wall and pounded on it so hard that I broke a hole in the sheet  rock.  This result wasn’t what I had planned, but the noise did stop for the day, so it wasn’t a complete loss.

The best part of having these prima donnas next door was the advent of the beauty pageants which occurred on a regular basis.  Since the owner hadn’t installed mirrors inside, the muscle bound contestants would all troop outside and stand in front of the huge plate glass windows to flex and pose.  I assume this was to check their regimen and assure that they were working on the right muscle groups, but some of them enjoyed it way too much for it to be simply instructive.  I never knew who won the pageants, but after a few moments of doing this, they would crowd back inside and the grunts, groans, and curses would resume.  After we had suffered this situation for some time, we had all we could tolerate and a call to Max seemed to be in order.  In his quiet, unflappable manner, Max let me know that he was sorry for my trouble, but the gym had a lease too and he couldn’t do anything about it.  We gritted our teeth and endured the tumult next door for most of a year.  Then one lovely afternoon, we calmly listened as the owner of the gym told us that he had to have a space that cost less and would be leaving soon.  After he left, we were almost delirious with joy!  Surely there was no way to go from here but up.  The next neighbors had to be better.

The meat market opened up within weeks.  Their building had burned down (which possibly should have been an indicator of what the future held) and the city wouldn’t allow them to rebuild, so they would be hawking their wares from our neighborhood.  We didn’t see how this could be a problem.  A few days later, the smoker arrived.  The noisy saw cutting through the roof to enable a flue might have started us thinking, but we were happily ignorant.  Within a week, the first fire was built.  Inside of a few days, everything in our music store stunk of hickory wood smoke.  Pianos sold in that era still emit a smoke smell when the felt hammers strike the strings.  All the books (paper is absorbent too) stunk as they left the store, the tee shirts we sold wafted the not-so-pleasant odor of stale wood smoke to the nostrils of shoppers.  We had assumed that the walls would seal out any fumes and smells, even if they had not helped with the noise pollution of the last fiasco.  What we found was that the sheet rock ended just above the false ceiling.  Between that point and the roof, there was only a steel mesh which kept humans from passing between the two spaces, but obviously not this smokey stench.  We wished that the body-builders would come back and pose out front again.

Fast forward another miserable year and the butchers left for greener pastures.  We were not optimistic about new neighbors, but didn’t await our fate quiescently.  It was time to take matters into our own hands, since Max pretty obviously wasn’t in our corner.  Before the little Hispanic grocery store opened, we had started looking for a place to purchase.  There were some minor problems, but before events could get the better of us, we found the perfect building in a great location and purchased it.  At last we were masters of our own fate.  Never again would we have to sit by as our business was damaged by an insensitive, absentee landlord.  Our troubles were over!

I’m not going to fill more pages with more words to describe the ways in which that statement proved false.  Suffice it to say that it didn’t take into consideration the expenses of owning our own commercial property.  Parking lot repairs, a new roof, ice damage, replacement of an almost new air conditioner compressor;  the list could go on and on, ad infinitum.  What I will say is that I’m learning to enjoy all my days, even the bad ones. There will probably be more of those to come.  That won’t alter the fact that among the dark, dreary things we wish we could forget, there are some amazing, wonderful times; times that light up the memories, making those bad intervals fade into inconsequential footnotes.  I will tell you in all honesty that those years when the music store suffered through bad neighbor after bad neighbor, those years were actually some of the best in my memory.  We enjoyed our children as they grew up through that era.  Good friends drew even closer and we matured ourselves.  What a wonderful season in our lives.  When we talk about the hard things, like those above, it’s to laugh about them, knowing that even those events were blessings of a sort.  They are part of what helped us to mature, to grow stronger.  Funny how that works.

Masters of our own fate?  That’s preposterous, if not downright stupid.  I’ll take the hand of God and the presence of His gifts any day.   I’ve said it before and will say it again; Life is good, because He is good.

“Fate is not the ruler, but the servant of Providence.”
(Edward G Bulwer-Lytton~British politician and novelist~1803-1873)

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good…”
(Romans 8:28a)

“Your cheatin’ heart will tell on you…”  The silence of the late night in our quiet neighborhood was torn by the words, bellowed from the front porch of the little house behind us.  In between the phrases, the mutilated chords sounded from the old battered guitar in Ricky’s hands.  The nearly forty year old man was inebriated again, drowning his unhappy memories in the bottle, as he always did when life got to be too much for him.  The little rental house had seen a parade of interesting characters in the years we had lived in that old house, and Ricky and Joy seemed determined to leave their mark on the block in which we lived.

Through a number of conversations and interactions at odd times of the night and day, I pieced together their story, at least the part they wanted me to know.  They had moved here from a neighboring state partially to escape the horrific memories of a young child killed in a freak accident, and also to escape the stigma of what was considered a mixed-race marriage.  She was nearly full-blood Choctaw Indian, while he was White, with no trace of Native-American heritage, evidently a union just as objectionable in the culture of southern Mississippi as if a White man had married an African-American woman.   They thought that a new start in far northwest Arkansas might be just what they needed to get straightened out, both in their marriage and in their addictions.  Unfortunately, moving doesn’t leave behind memories or harmful behaviors, and they quickly found themselves foundering in the same disastrous pattern again.

A couple of weeks after the concert on the front porch, I heard Ricky’s voice clamoring at the foot of my front steps.  “Hey Paul!  Come out here!  I want you to talk to me about Jesus!”  First of all, you should know that when Ricky wasn’t impaired by alcohol, he was one of the softest spoken men I knew.  His voice was never raised and if he had stood next to the door and called me, I wouldn’t have heard him.  Quite clearly, he was drunk again, but he wanted me to talk with him about my faith, so I did.  I spent an hour with him and his wife in their tiny living room, with both of them paying close attention, well…semi-close attention.  They seemed to nod every once in awhile and it was pretty obvious that in spite of their concentration on my words, there wouldn’t be much memory of the conversation in the morning.  I suggested we talk about it again some other time and said goodnight.  The next day, neither Ricky nor Joy wanted to discuss anything more momentous than the weather.

And, thus is was, whenever we talked.  If they were sober, no mention of beliefs would be countenanced.  But the next time they went on a bender, the shout at the foot of the steps came like a thunderclap.  This time, I suggested calmly that, since they weren’t themselves, it wouldn’t be beneficial for me to talk with them just now.  I would however, be happy to talk with them anytime they were sober.  Ricky went home, but we didn’t talk about it again, since they wouldn’t allow it.  I was stymied.  I couldn’t share my faith verbally, so I did the only thing left for me;  I tried to show them God’s love in my actions.

Ricky lost his license (for obvious reasons), so he needed transportation to and from work, about a mile away.  I drove him a time or two, but couldn’t be around every time he needed transportation, so I gave him my old Raleigh bicycle to ride.  There was one semi-humorous episode that the bicycle engendered.  One night, there was a knock on the door and Ricky was there.  “Paul, you’ve got to call the police!  Someone has stolen your bike!”  Knowing that he was impaired again, I suggested that it might just have been misplaced.   After a few moment’s thought, he brightened.  “That’s it!  I left it up the street at my friend’s house.  I’ll go get it now.”  I thought about his condition, but didn’t stop him.  A few moments later, I heard the sound of the bicycle’s brakes coming down the hill and knew he had found the bike.  Of course, the sound of the brakes was prelude to a loud crash and muffled curses as he ran off the road into the ditch.  I waited and he re-appeared a few moments later, this time pushing the two-wheeler.  “I’m all right!”  he shouted as he passed.  “Just a scratch!”

We had many opportunities to show God’s love to this couple in the next few months, but the most intense was the day Joy decided she had had enough and took an entire bottle of Tylenol to end it all.  They were both drunk and it took quite some time for Joy’s action and the consequences thereof to penetrate Ricky’s stupor.  He called 911 and we became aware of the situation when the ambulance arrived, its siren screaming.  The paramedics refused to allow the drunken man in the ambulance when they transported his wife to the emergency room, so I took him in my car.  I have to admit, it was embarrassing to get out and go into the hospital with him.  My reputation!  What would my friends or customers think?  The doctors even refused to talk with him in his condition, so I refereed for them.  After finding out that Joy would recover, although with possible permanent damage to her liver, I took the man home to sleep it off.

I know of one more blow that life had to deal to this troubled pair.  It was one of the last times I was to see them.  Ricky was cold sober as he asked me for help one more time.  They had gotten word from Mississippi that their oldest son had been killed in an automobile accident.  As usual, they had no funds and he asked to borrow some gas money.  We didn’t have much back then, but they needed it more than we did so the bill was placed into his hands as I said, “Pay it back if you can.  We’ll be praying for you.”  They were gone a couple of weeks and came back, but only stayed in that house another few days.  Ricky and Joy moved away, giving no indication of where they were going.  I still don’t know where they are today.

What an anticlimax!   I can hear the exclamations now, “You made us read all that for this lame ending?  No miracle turn-around, no ‘happily-ever-after’ conclusion?”   I promise you that no one is more disappointed in the ending than I am.  I invested my time, my money, my bicycle;  I invested myself!  And this is what I get?  Nothing!  No happy resolution, not even a vestige of hope to reassure me that my expenditure wasn’t wasted!

Ah!  But it isn’t the ending.  For all I know, it was just the beginning, or possibly even just a continuation.  I wrote in my last post that our accomplishments are always a team effort.  I’m still not sure if that message was helpful for any of you who read those lines, but it was more like a slap in the face to me.  I’m pretty sure that I didn’t do the planting for Ricky and Joy.  They had some knowledge of who God is before I met them.  I just watered what someone else planted and the conclusion doesn’t depend on my efforts.  I may never know the rest of the story.  And, finally, that’s okay with me.  It’s not my responsibility to manufacture happy endings.  That’s completely in Somebody Else’s hands.  I’ve got my commission and I’ll keep plodding along, keeping my eyes peeled for the next soul that needs a drink of cool water.  That, I can do.

“Where there’s life, there’s hope.”
(Terence~Roman playwright and dramatist~195 BC-159 BC)

“Morever, it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.”
(Holy Bible~I Corinthians 4:2)

Two bolts.  That’s all that held the starter on…The faulty starter that we were to take out of the mini-van and replace with a new one.  The question was, could it be replaced in the one hour window of time we had available on a Saturday afternoon?  We knew that those two bolts would have to be removed, the two wires to the battery and ignition would be taken loose and then the process would be reversed.  That’s what?  A fifteen minute job?

I hear you laughing already, at least those of you experienced in auto repair.  I also have done my share of shade-tree mechanic duty and should have known better.  But, as you well know, “Hope springs eternal…”, so the girl’s husband and I started the job anyway.  With confidence, the appropriate wrench was applied to the first bolt, with a flippant, “Right tool for the right job.”  I shoved with all my might, then put all my weight behind the shove, right before I acknowledged that it might be a long afternoon if this were to be the way of things.  The bolt wouldn’t move for anything.  I took a moment, quoting under my breath,  “Righty tighty, lefty loosey”, making motions with my hands to be sure I wasn’t upside down in my assumption of the correct direction to loosen the bolt.  No, I had it right, but was obviously unequal to the task so the young man gave it a mighty try, but still no movement.  We took turns trying, but it was clear.  The bolt was stuck tight.  After awhile, we decide to try a little science and, remembering Archimedes and his law of levers, did some heavy duty prying, to have success!  The bolt started out.  Twenty minutes gone with one down and one to go.  It wasn’t quite like moving the entire world, but it was a victory.  We might make that sixty minute limit after all!

It was not to be.  As is almost always the case in these jobs, even though the second bolt was frozen in much the same way, the same solution couldn’t be applied.  There was less room, and the angle was completely different.  Archie the scientist had said, “Give me a place to stand…”, but there wasn’t any room for that.  There was barely room for the wrench, much less any space in which to place a lever.  We struggled and struggled, each taking our turn, with a bumped knuckle here and there, along with a bit of muscle strain.  Both of us were endeavoring to think of different solutions.  We no longer cared if it was the “right tool for the right job”.  We’d have been ecstatic to use a paint brush to get the bolt out if that would have achieved the purpose.  Finally, with about five minutes left in the hour and still only one bolt loose, remembering the old Army adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, get a bigger hammer,”  we managed to get a two by four piece of wood on the wrench and pounded on it until the bolt turned.  Once again, success, but just a little late.  The grandchildren’s dad had to get to work and we hadn’t completed the job.  He stayed long enough to get the wires loose, but just couldn’t spare the time to stay and install the new unit.

I stayed to finish the job, after assuring him that the installation would be faster.  Sure enough, the reverse process took less than half the time to complete.  I admit to having the more enjoyable task all to myself, since it is undeniably more satisfying to do the part of the job that leads to completion than the disassembly part.  Half an hour later, I was inserting the key into the ignition and turning it, to be rewarded with the pleasant sound of a starter turning and then the motor running. 

I have just one question for the reader…Would it be fair for me to tell my buddies that I repaired my daughter’s car?  After all, it obviously wasn’t running when the young man left.  What I did made it run, so I must have fixed it, right?  Nothing could be further from the truth! It’s clear that you would call this a team effort, with both of us being able to take credit, but the teamwork extends much further back than that.  My friend, Mike (with some input from the Lovely Lady’s brother) helped us diagnose the problem and then purchased the starter from the dealer before his son Jason delivered it to us.  Oh, and don’t forget Yukio, who built the starter motor and his sidekick Hideo, who constructed the solenoid for it.  Okay, so I made those last two up.  But, the list goes on and on.  How many accomplishments we take credit for alone, when in reality the job was started well before we horned in on the action.  We just completed the work, but seldom are we the ones who also initiated the project.  I like the way Paul the Apostle said it when he told us that the one who plants and the one who waters both have the same purpose.  The crop wouldn’t grow to maturity without either of them, but neither gets to claim the glory, since God is responsible for actually making it grow.

So, the car is running and I’m pleased with my part in it.  The young man who’s married to my little girl should be proud of his involvement, too.  But, neither of us is going to be able to claim credit for the whole job.  What a great and humbling principle!  All of life is a team effort.

And, I’m grateful for the reminder.  The sore muscles and banged up knuckles, I could do without… 

“I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments, I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself.”
(Alexander Graham Bell~American inventor~1847-1922)

“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
(Sir Isaac Newton~English mathematician and physicist~1642-1727)

“We’ll take the piano.  You’ll deliver it, won’t you?”  The heavy-set, unkempt man in front of me is not cut from the same cloth as most of my piano customers.  He’s what we would call “local color”, wearing his dirty overalls, one strap unhooked and hanging behind him.  The long, bushy beard looks wild and the dirty matted hair, even wilder.  Nevertheless, he reaches into his pocket to bring out a handful of cash and pays the price for the old upright piano.  It’s a good piano, but shows clear evidence of its seventy years of use.  We’ve done everything we can to make it function properly, but the darkened, almost black finish will never polish up.  His wife and daughter hang back nearby, and it’s clear from her demeanor that the girl is to be the principal beneficiary of the purchase.

The teenage girl is, like her father, carrying more weight than is normal for her build and is a bit backward.  Her social skills are minimal and she looks to her father to answer every statement or question which I direct to her.  After a few unsuccessful attempts at conversation with her, I realize that I’m making her uncomfortable and turn my attention to the dad and the task of concluding last minute arrangements.  They live a good distance from my store, but have given me fairly complete instructions, so the date and time for delivery having been set, they depart, leaving a good bit of evidence of their visit behind.  The scented candle and opened door will rectify that little issue for us fairly quickly.

On the day of the delivery, my piano-moving companion arrives and the trailer is loaded quickly and efficiently.  We’ve done this before, so nothing is going to catch us napping, or so we think.  The first 15 miles of our journey pass uneventfully, but then we leave the pavement of the state highway for the gravel road.  Still no problem.  Then, following the instructions I’ve been given, we turn again into a dirt lane, along which we travel for several miles.  We realize that we’re in what is known as “the boonies”.  Of course, that word comes from the more common “boondocks”, which our military brought home from the Philippines in the early 20th century.   The word “bundok” from a common Philippine dialect means simply, mountain and came to signify any place away from civilization and hard to get to.  (Yeah, only a word-nerd would care.)  Wherever the word came from, we were in it.  The foothills of the Ozarks have many such places, but we seldom deliver pianos to them.

We pass old, tumbledown shacks with porches piled high with debris and multitudes of dogs piling out from under them to bark and snarl at us as we go by, the dirt swirling up behind us.  The one or two individuals we see don’t seem as friendly as the country folk we’re used to when out in most of the more traveled areas.  No raised hands in friendly greeting; no smiles in response to ours.  My faithful sidekick mutters from his side of the truck, “‘Deliverance’! It’s just like the movie all over again.”   Thankfully, following our homemade map, we reach the entrance to the driveway between the fence posts, as it has been described to us, and we turn in.  Just follow the driveway up to the house, the man had said, so we follow the winding course of the driveway, actually just a couple of ruts through the field.  It winds around the edge of the hillside and all we see before us is a couple of decrepit, tumbledown chicken houses.

Surely this can’t be right!  But, we follow the drive as instructed and are steered to a small tin building right between the two long-abandoned chicken houses.  This is obviously the shed where the poultry had been processed over the years, where sick animals would have been treated and feed might have been stored, but there is a car parked in front, so we pull up and go to the door.  The man greets us from inside and shows us where we are to place the piano.  A look around makes it obvious that the family is indeed in residence here, although I have never seen such accommodations.  The shed has a few bare light bulbs strung up on extension cords inside its one-room interior.  There is a wood stove for heat and an ancient, filthy refrigerator, along with an electric hot plate to cook on.  Other than that and a couple of beds in opposite corners, there is nothing but junk in the tiny dark hovel.  The piano is taken off the trailer and moved into the designated location and we prepare to leave, still reeling from the conditions that we have observed.  We are amazed as the gentleman bids us goodbye, just as jovial and pleased to be the new owner of this piano, as if it were the finest grand and we had just placed it into a well-appointed drawing room in his mansion on the hillside.

We are relieved to be out of the area and back onto the highway within minutes, but can’t get over what we have just witnessed.  But, as seems to be common with events like this, as soon as we arrive back at our pleasant comfortable homes, the plight of this family is all but forgotten, except to relate the tale to a few folks who express complete disbelief.

I didn’t think much about it again, until one day about two years later when the Lovely Lady returned from a high school music contest, which she had been asked to judge.  Because of her years as a piano teacher, she, along with a couple of other knowledgeable educators had judged the pianists entered in the contest.  The contestants played their prepared pieces on the Steinway grand piano at the performing arts center; for most of them, the first time they had even sat at a grand piano.  The Lovely Lady told me about one girl in particular, a heavy-set young lady, dressed unfashionably, who was reticent in her responses to the judge’s questions.  She sat at the piano, obviously in awe of such a fine instrument, and took several moments to settle down.  Then, she began to play.  Her playing was confident, the timing impeccable.  She executed the piece with feeling, starting quietly and soaring to a climax of emotion with great musicality, then back down again as the passion of the music ebbed, concluding the performance with beautiful chords and quiet melodies and counter-melodies spiraling down into silence.  As it was related to me by the Lovely Lady, it was not the most polished performance they heard that day, nor the most perfect, but without question, worthy of an “excellent” rating and a great surprise to those present who had been inclined to expect less from the backward young lady.

Yes, it was indeed that young girl who lived in the chicken house, learning to play on a rebuilt seventy-year old clunker of a piano.  In the midst of poverty and lack, accomplishment reared it’s lovely head.  I am still learning that appearances can be deceiving, and presumption is a dangerous path to follow, but this one was a real wake up call, almost a shift in paradigms (if I may use that trendy, trite term).  I have delivered beautiful pianos to astounding homes, the buyers only interested in the integrity of their decor, with no interest whatsoever in the quality of the sound or the touch of the keyboard.  I have left homes, having delivered the piano, only to be followed out the door by the whining tone of children asking why their parents bought that stupid thing.  But, I’m fairly certain that I have never before or since that day delivered a more important instrument to a more important customer.  

I don’t know what she has done with her talent and skill since then, but simply to know that this young lady had in two short years developed the joy and confidence that she displayed then, inspires and motivates me to believe that no one, regardless of their environment or financial condition, is beyond hope or expectation of great things.  I pray that it is never otherwise.

“Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality.  All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.”  (Niccolo Machiavelli~Italian writer and statesman~1469-1527)

I heard it in my head today…Karen Carpenter’s spectacular, sultry voice singing, “Talking to myself and feeling old.  Nothing ever seems to fit; feeling like I want to quit…Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.”   What made me start to hear the song?  Was it the gray skies I saw through the window as I awoke to the alarm clock’s raucous squalls?  Maybe it was the thermometer hovering in the upper teens as this winter-hater left the house for work a little later.  It was Monday morning, after all and there wasn’t much promise of any change for the day.

First thing as I sat at my desk, I noticed one of my friends had left the following encouraging message as her status update in one of the prevalent social media sites: “It’s raining and it’s Monday.  Any questions?”  I could identify and told her so.  Several others digitally nodded agreement, by clicking the “like” button.  And, as the morning progressed, it seemed that, whether the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy, or simply in the course of normal events, it was going to be a day like that.

Each time the phone rang this morning, there was a problem to address.  I told the Lovely Lady later that it wasn’t so much that everybody was mad at me, but just that I had to scramble to keep them from getting into that condition.  Each conversation could have gone either way; a lost customer and bad PR, or satisfaction of a disaster averted and a continued good relationship with them.  By the end of the morning, I was definitely feeling the manifestation of the derivative stress.  The tightening muscles in the neck, along with the accompanying headache were my reward for a job well done.  Packages traced, back-orders filled, promises of merchandise to be held for pickup…All of these seemed irrelevant in light of my discomfort. 

Does it seem that I’m complaining again?  Because I’m definitely not.  You should know by now that these minor setbacks are commonplace, with the resultant low spirits being short-lived.  I have learned that I cannot stay for long in the little valleys, because I see and talk with too many people in the day who invariably tell me their compelling stories.  There is no doubt in my mind that nothing increases a thankful spirit like realizing the insignificance of my problems.

It took one more problem, however, to shed the light in the darkness for me.  An issue arose with an incoming shipment, a problem which necessitated a call to the customer service department of one of our vendors.  The usual perky young lady answered the phone and asked how she could direct my call.  When I responded by telling her that I had an issue with a shipment, she replied, “Oh, you need to speak with Margie.”  I realized, as Margie’s pleasant voice came on moments later, that I never talked with her except when I had a complaint.  I apologized for that, but she replied cheerily, “Oh, that’s my job!  I love helping people solve problems!”  Understand, this lady talks with people all day long who are griping.  They never call her to say how happy they were that their order arrived safely, or on time, or with the correct contents.  She only gets complaints.

I was reminded of the frequent calls I take which compliment our service, our selection, or our presentation on our website.  Sure, I take the calls with complaints, too, but those I take to heart and respond negatively, at least in my demeanor, if not in my interaction with the customer.  But, I don’t get the negative calls even half of the time, perhaps not even one fourth of the time.  Margie was her usual cheerful self as she told me that she would look into my problem and get back with me.  And I was refreshed!  What a great example, what an attitude to aspire to.  Sometimes, we just need to be reminded of how great our lives really are, in spite of the negative situations.  Hey, everybody has those!  The key isn’t in whether everything is hunky-dory, it’s in whether we let it bog us down and steal our joy in life.

Another friend listed as her status on that same social medium this evening, “LIFE. IS. GOOD.”  I wholeheartedly agree!  Nobody said perfect, just good.  And, I could hear the rest of the lyrics from Karen’s song resounding in my head, “Funny how it seems I always end up here with you.  Run and find the one who loves me…”  I’m confident she wasn’t singing about the same Someone I’m thinking of, but the reminder is apropos.  In tough times, we’re never alone.  Life is good, simply because He is Good.

Oh yeah…the sun broke through the clouds this afternoon, both literally and figuratively.  What a beautiful day!

“Stay the course, light a star.
Change the world, where’er you are.”
Richard Le Gallienne~English poet and author 1866-1947